Related Stories

Related Videos

A child actor, he made his film debut at age two and was famous by the age of six for playing Opie Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show. Howard made his feature directorial debut in 1977 with Grand Theft Auto (which he also wrote) and since then the Oscar-winning filmmaker has helmed dozens of popular movies including Cocoon; Parenthood; Far and Away; Apollo 13; A Beautiful Mind; The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons.

The legendary filmmaker and father of four spoke to us this week to promote his new movie, Inferno, his third in the bestselling Robert Langdon series from author Dan Brown.

Inferno finds Langdon (played by Tom Hanks) in a race against time to stop the release of a deadly virus that a madman believes will fix the world’s overpopulation problem — by killing half of humanity.

Your parents were both actors and your daughter Bryce Dallas Howard is following in your footsteps. That’s three generations — are the Howards a dynasty now?

[Laughs] I don’t know about that, but my daughter — she might surpass us all!

Inferno has some amazing visuals, especially those nightmare scenes and hallucinations from Robert Langdon’s (Tom Hanks) fevered brain. Who’s involved in turning Dante’s words about hell into pictures?

That’s me, as a director, guiding the efforts of our creative team and our research team, delving into the various scenarios described in Dante’s Inferno. That work really defined hell for Western civilization, for our culture, in a way it had never been viewed before. In a way, Dante was also really inventing the horror genre — many of the shock moments of contemporary cinema owe a lot to his vision.

Is it fair to describe Inferno as a more immediate thriller than the first two?

This film moves away from the theology and history of the past and moves into a more contemporary issue. It is a more modern story. Overpopulation is a contemporary problem and this is a reaction to that. It still has the elements of the past but, yes, it’s a more present issue. Part of the appeal of Dan Brown’s story is that it’s a hot-button issue, but it’s still entertainment. Great fun for the audience, but with that entertainment comes a look at some controversial ideas.

What’s the secret to Tom Hanks’ ongoing appeal with movie audiences?

Well, he’s extraordinary. What I learned as a young guy, acting or directing, is when you think of the greats — Jimmy Stewart, Bette Davis — they’re all such different people, but what they have in common is that they work harder than everyone else. They are discerning and they have their own, built-in version of quality control. Tom elevates everything he’s in. He’s fun. He’s smart. He’s got an amazing work ethic and he loves these Robert Langdon stories. We all do. And we all enjoy the life experience of making the films, the adventure and travelling to exciting places.

You’re directing and producing a lot of interesting projects, for the big and the small screens — is this an unusually busy time?

It’s a great time! I do work a lot. TV, movies, all of it — it all affords us more and more ways to tell a story. We’re doing fun, bold, experimental work for National Geographic, and I just did a documentary on the Beatles (Eight Days a Week) … now, a broader array of audiences can find stories that speak directly to them, creating a reality for more personal and specific kinds of stories. Every genre has its reason to exist ... Entertainment finds the audience that needs it.